OCA preloader logo
Study Visit: Si Barber at Bank Street Arts - The Open College of the Arts

To find out more details about the transfer to The Open University see A New Chapter for OCA.

Study Visit: Si Barber at Bank Street Arts thumb

Study Visit: Si Barber at Bank Street Arts

Saturday saw a group of students at Bank Street Arts in Sheffield. The gallery was closed to the public and Photography Curator Andrew Conroy had joined us to talk about Si Barber‘s body of work ‘The Big Society‘ and how the exhibition had been hung. The visit presented an excellent opportunity to discuss the work in detail, and we spent a good 15 minutes in front of this image.

Entitled ‘The funeral cortege of Private Lewis Hendry 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment’ the image illustrates the very real challenges in taking socially engaged photography. Military funerals are both public showpieces and scenes of private grief and the photographer treads a delicate line. It is a sign of the thoughtfulness of Si’s work that he has caught an image which recognises these different dimensions. Student, Jim Smith, has written in his learning log after the visit:
A military funeral passes Poundland – a kind of pun on the big society is implied, and perhaps also that life is cheap in the military. However, a closer look reveals the respect being accorded to the cortege by members of the public, who line the streets. Another layer of meaning perhaps is perhaps the question is raised about the nature of the society that the military is protecting. I think this was the most interesting picture of the exhibition, and that was because of the multiple layers of meaning and the contrasts between those meanings. I am not sure now if this was an image that was taken on the spur of the moment, or planned in advance. Was the significance there at the time, or does it come later, with each viewer’s interpretation? Perhaps both.
It is difficult to summarise the discussion, which, in part, is why attending the study visits is worthwhile, but a sense of why Jim might be making these observations can be gained from looking at the following two selections from the image:


In this final selection, we have an image which arguably speaks tellingly of how families support each other at times of crisis and hints at how the dynamics of that support change over time.


Posted by author: Genevieve Sioka

10 thoughts on “Study Visit: Si Barber at Bank Street Arts

  • Picking up on the blue jumpered man I wonder if we are pulled over to look at him because he stands in for us as on-lookers.

  • Very interesting cropping exercise. It tells us of the many narrative possibilities of a given situation, and how different photographers may chose to convey different information out of the same scene. In this case, the Poundland sign makes the photograph and introduces the uncomfortable connotations that most of us will have picked up.
    But how about the guy in the blue jumper partially out of the frame, on the left? He seems to have more visual weight than expected, to the extent that I keep being drawn to him time after time.
    I wonder why…perhaps he’s the only person whose expression of grief we can actually identify…

  • I really enjoyed the exhibit at Bank Street. Looking back, perhaps my brain was working overtime, leaping from conclusion to conclusion in looking at the images and as a result of the conversations.
    I’ll be putting some notes on my blog soon…

  • I wasn’t at the Exhibition, but I probably have more reasons than those of you who were there to be drawn into this photograph, and to become a part of it. In the young man in the blue jumper Jose and anned have seen the whole essence of what the photograph portrays – perhaps the photographer did not, at that time, see this, otherwise he would have placed him a little further in the image. If a documentary photograph is meant to demonstrate not just the picture, but the emotions and responses to the event this has succeeded but, for me, not in the physical support being given by the mourners to each other but by the young man in blue whose eyes are focussed so full of feeling on the mourners. His presence is not as a voyeur but as one who cares and feels as though for all of us.

  • And perhaps that’s why he’s on the periphery?
    Anyway, Si has a Flickr account and on there is another version of the PTO/DNR woman. Interesting to see the comparison – it’s not the exact same photograph (hands are slightly different), but what a difference processing makes!

    • And another version of the above photograph, which is different again to the one on display at the gallery I think. On Flickr, the man is blue is even less in the frame. Perhaps Si doesn’t see him as a major player, perhaps on Flickr he was trying to reduce the pull of the blue…

  • I have been to a couple of these sessions now and I must say that they are so much more valuable than going to the exhibition alone. This was a particularly good one, partly because we were on Gareth’s territory and he had researched the subject well and partly because we seemed to end up with a small group of people with plenty of diverse opinions. I would urge other students to come along if you have not attended before.
    There was a picture there of a pair of shoes on fire. Bizarre. The story goes that the owner had tried to sell them at a car boot sale and failed (they were in pretty poor condition so it was not surprising). He was burning them because he did not want to leave them in the rubbish for somebody to use without paying for them. How else could you pick up such a wonderful story than by attending an OCA study visit.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

> Next Post Art or Vandalism?

< Previous Post Musical highlights of 2011

Back to blog listings